CiRCE 2010: A Contemplation of Liberty by Andrew Kern
This is the title talk for the 2010 conference, and it is currently available to listen to online for those so inclined.
Summary
Thesis: “If you know the truth, the truth sets you free. But if you don’t or can’t know the truth, then you are in bondage.”
The capricious Nile v. Burning Bush — two streams running in Moses, and the Truth sets His people free.
River of life in history: God’s river of life began in Eden and flows upwards, sometimes more powerfully and more noticeably than at other times, through history and will continue until it takes us to the New Jerusalem. Truth brings the freedom of self-rule, honor of God’s image, responsibility of stewardship, and rightly ordered hierarchy (i.e. rulers also submitted to Higher Authority).
3. River of death in history: Satan’s river of lies and fear began at the fall and flows ever downwards; it also is a continuous river, which ebbs and flows, until Satan is defeated. Fear brings slavery, centralization of power, tyranny (i.e. rulers arrogating all authority). The current flavor of death and fear in the river is naturalistic, relativist materialism: denial of divine & supernatural, denial of image of God in man, denial of absolute truth & morality; there is nothing higher than money and power, control.
- Application: We are complicit in the stumbling of children unless we direct them toward the paths of Truth, of Freedom. Healing, restoration, freedom comes primarily through how we teach our children, secondarily through what we teach them.
Purpose of Education
In the tradition of truth, education cultivates wisdom & virtue, humanizes people and cultivates a free people.
In the tradition of fear & bondage, education adapts people to their environment, creates servile units for the use of other people, usually the economy or military.
“When a father raises a child, when a mother nourishes a child, the goal is not to fit that child into your mold, is it? Please tell me it’s not. It’s not to mold that child’s soul. It is to nourish it. It is to watch as that child becomes wildly unlike anything you ever could have predicted — thank God! It is to see it flourish — flourish! — to be blessed.”
That segment hit me like a load of bricks. I think 2010 is the year I am being disabused of the idea that I shape my children into the form I deem best. Instead, I cultivate and water and weed, the seeds that God planted are the plants that grow and bear fruit and the circumstances of the children’s lives are the weather God sends. It is a thought that is both freeing and terrifying. And the connection that Kern made is that if I become fearful in that terror (I picture terror of the elvish, Galadriel sort), I am tempted to forfeit that freedom and be lulled into the false security of false control.
God is dangerous and unpredictable; while He is the God of all comfort, the way He works is not a comfortable way. We are reading through Judges as a family right now, and all one can really do is cock one’s head and say, “I don’t get it.” A free person, a person being conformed more and more into God’s image, is dangerous. I am not raising kittens or tame lions, but men. Women. I will be happy if I raise hobbits or Riders of the Mark, but I think that the image of God is like a Numenorean strain in all of us. Wise, dangerous, unsettling, and glorious. I can’t make people like that, but I can irrigate deserts, making our lives hospitable places for the Spirit to do His work.
Petty Tyranny
Ok, so 2010 is also the year I see more clearly all the shades and shreds of tyranny woven throughout my mothering style and habits. I think the two threads are related. If I have to shape these children up into my own image, I have to wrest control that I have not been given.
Kern quotes a C.S. Lewis titled “The Poison of Subjectivism“; my notes here are not direct quotes.
If the rulers are not themselves under a rule of law, then you, the subjects, are not a free people. You are exposed to their arbitrary whims. We and our rulers are only of the same type (necessary component for democracy or republic) if we are under the same law.
This reminds me of Charlotte Mason’s chapters on authority at the beginning of School Education, which I have not yet gotten around to blogging about, but Brandy has and I highly recommend her summaries.
This is what Kern has to say:
Lest we feel good about ourselves [when thinking about fascists, nazis, Darwinists, etc.], petty tyranny in the classroom [or home] is in principle the same thing. If you set yourself up as the arbitrary law in the classroom, not subject to the law of God, you are a tyrrant, a relativist, demonstrating that you will do what is to your own advantage.
Free Teacher-Mothers under Self-Rule
Bringing these threads together, we have instead this ideal to strive toward:
Man is a husbandman, a steward, a lord — not a tyrant. His goal is the blessedness of his subjects, to see them fully realized.
We should be cultivating freedom in ourselves and in our children. And Truth is what sets us free.
Freedom is not indulgence of the appetites; freedom is not doing whatever your appetites drive you to do. It is self-rule. It is when reason and the will are ordered to the truth — the truth of Who God is, the truth of who you are, the truth of what the world is, the truth of all the relationships betwixt these — that is when we can be free.
So, what should we teach? Truth. Do not avoid, downplay, or despise any pursuit of Truth:
Education is the art of truth-fishing, truth in all its forms. Music, math, grammar — all are arts of truth-seeking.
I will end with a summary statement from the beginning of the lecture:
We must humbly and patiently seek to restore something we don’t have. We must humbly and patiently seek to restore something we don’t understand. It’s worse! We must humbly and patiently seek to restore something we won’t want. Because it will defy our expectations and our appetites. [...] This is a work for the generations. We must do our part. We must take the next hill. We won’t be able to enter into glory in our schools tomorrow.
Discussion
Feel free to participate in this discussion, whether you have listened to this talk or not, by leaving a comment or reading the entries of other participants, all linked at Brandy’s blog.
Mystie,
I always, always appreciate your summaries! Thank you! :)
The petty tyranny hit home for me, too. It is something I’ve been working on after reading Charlotte’s work and I completely agree that she and Kern are talking about the same thing here.
I must say I felt such hope when Kern admitted that we are trying to offer our children what we didn’t get and what we don’t always understand–I kept being amazed that after such handicaps, he still thinks we can do it! And so we shall, at least as best as we can.
ps. When you said that God is dangerous, it reminded me of Aslan.